Sustainability at Harvard

School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

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Putting the sky in a box

Van Gogh imprisoned stars like yellow daises smashed behind a sheet of blue glass. Winslow Homer abandoned a casual boater between angry waters and a bludgeoned cadre of clouds. Gerhard Richter stole and melted down the gray winter air into a series of polished mirrors. In each case, a painter sought to capture a small sliver of the dramatic and ever-changing atmosphere. Another kind of artist, an engineer, is also attempting to frame the sky in a box; in his case, the canvas is a laboratory.

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Recent Stories

Renewing Houses, connecting research to action

Hard as it is to admit, climate change won’t be stopped simply by turning out your lights, or by taking shorter showers. Those are certainly parts of the solution, but it’s going to take the innovation and creativity of a lot of our best and brightest.

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Undergrads create ‘dirt-powered’ light for Africa

A team composed of Harvard students and alumni was among the winners of the World Bank’s Lighting Africa 2008 Development Marketplace competition, held in Accra, Ghana, from May 6 to 8, 2008. The team’s innovation, microbial fuel cell-based lighting systems suitable for sub-Saharan Africa, netted the Harvard group a $200,000 prize.

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